Going to Myanmar tomorrow! Will be there until two Mondays from now. In spite of my best efforts, I will most likely will get food poisoning. Thats just how it works.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know there are ethical issues about tourism in a country with a repressive government, Myanmar. Part of what I spend will help fund that government through taxes. The fact is, however, that the businesses that I will be spending money on really need it. My money will make a real difference in people's lives. So, in the end, I think that going to Myanmar is fine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Continuing with the narrative:
I get in the Cab and I say 'can you take me to NUS?' and he says 'What, NUH? I said ' No NUS'.
'Oh great NUH is the hospital, much better to go to NUS than to the Hospital'.
We drive away. We start getting into the typical airport taxi type conversation. 'I will be here for five months or so'.
Certain details escape me.
I remember that he pointed to all of the lush greenery and said 'see all of this, everything here is nicely maintained and gardened'. And seriously, there were a lot of tropical plants on the median and sides.
Interestingly, this highway had traffic flowing on the right, and the car had the steering wheel on the right as well. For a bit, I was confused, but that highway turned out to just be an anomaly.
The taxi driver gives me the typical Singapore rules talk; 'This place is very safe, as long as you don't break any of the rules. If you do, you will be punished!'.
I ask him about gum. He says its a big no-no.
At some point we are driving through a HUGE, very long tunnel. He says 'see this? This was just opened last week!' the highway used to be above ground, and you could see all of downtown, but now there is just his tunnel. That's right. Singapore put a whole highway underground, without really needing to, they just thought it'd be nice.
When we get to NUS, I ask for directions to Temasek Hall, where I live, from a passerby. I was quite startled by his accent; Most Singaporeans at JHU have masked their accent pretty well, so that it sounds vaguely British. But a real Singaporean accent is very unique! I must mention that it is a true accent of the English language, just like a Scottish or Boston accent, as it is the language they speak here. In an Ultimate frisbee tournament I played in in the third week here, there was a team from Sheares Hall (another dorm). They were called the 'Shucks!', and the jerseys had a picture of a shark. I thought it was really clever of them to make fun of their own accent.
Interestingly, the people who I asked directions from were the second group of passersby who I saw. The first group the cab driver didn't reccomend I asked; he national-origin-ly (not racially) stereotyped them as being Chinese, and said that they might not know where Temasek was, and wouldn't know English very well. Having been here for some time, I think that this profiling is unwarranted; most Chinese people here have at the very least decent English. Now I know that, based on where they were walking, and the building complex they live in, they may very well have not know where Temasek Hall was, but the cab driver didn't have that information. It reminds me of a story one of my Singaporean-Chinese friends told me to day, so I will tell you later, because it is time to sign off.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
So, all of you may have noticed that I have been somewhat negligent in updating this blog; I have not even gotten past writing about my 18 hour layover in Japan. One would hope that the reason behind this is that I have been doing more important things.
If that is true, then a secondary reason is perfectionism; a desire to make each post as long and detailed as my first. This leads to a psychology of 'oh I don't have time to do that much writing right now, so I will do it later'.
So, I am changing my strategy; perhaps by writing more short posts, as my dad's friend suggested, or by regular working on longer posts to post at periodic intervals.
I still have a desire for this blog to be a coherent narrative of my time in Singapore, so I will continue writing about events that happened a month and a half ago, and hopefully the past will catch up with the present.
Now, as I said, I sleep in the internet cafe in Tokyo; I catch the train back to the airport, collect my luggage, and get my boarding pass. I have a few hours in the airport; this is when the mishap with the sushi lady happens, mentioned in my first post. Without thinking, I also buy some gum (illegal in Singapore).
Without getting into any details, I will mention that the toilets in the airport had some pretty cool bells and whistles.
The plane ride over was really nice; Japan airlines is probably the best airline I have ever flown; the food actually seemed pretty fresh. There also several kinds of meat and fish included in the food. When I asked myself how many animals had died to feed me, I came up with the answer 'several'. Furthermore, hot green tea that they served was excellent.
So, I land in the SG airport, and nothing too eventful happens. At customs, they ask me about what I will be doing, in Singapore, and I explain that I will be studying. If I remember correctly, I showed them some documents I got from the school, and explain that I would be getting my actual student's pass (an ID card, I later found out) from the Immigration and Customs Authority at NUS the next week. They stamp my passport with a 'Social Visit Pass' good for 90 days. They also stamp my debarkation card with this pass; printed at the bottom of this card are the words "WARNING: DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW"**
I collect my baggage, and head for customs; I remember that I have some gum, so I go the 'items to declare' line. But they just wave me on through to the 'nothing to declare' line, and don't even check anything. I could have had anything! I neither confirm nor deny that I actually threw the gum away before going through customs. And I will neither confirm nor deny that I smuggled gum in from Malaysia this past weekend. And I will neither confirm nor deny that I am chewing gum as I write this post***.
So I catch a cab. The cab ride itself was interesting; I want to tell you about it, but I have reached the point where writing more would make this blog unsustainable to regularly update. You will hear about the cab ride, including and the conversation that I had with the driver, and my first sights of Singapore,at the beginning of the next post.
Tooteloo!
**They are serious. Since being here, I have learned that whether or not you are considered a trafficker is determined only by the amount of a substance that you possess. The initial sentencing is quickly carried out by a single judge, and there is one level of appeal, after which your only hope is presidential pardon. If (when) you are found guilty, you have a week, give or take to live.
As you might guess, Singapore does not have a drug problem.
***But, even though chewing gum is illegal Singapore, you just get a fine if caught, and I even hear that if customs agents catch you with it, you can just say 'its for personal use' and they will let you through. Some de-facto legalization.
Interestingly, if you read about the gum problems that Singapore was having a few decades ago, you would understand why it was outlawed. There was so much gum stuck on the subway doors that they would not open! You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore. I include an excerpt that I fount to be pretty hilarious below:
If that is true, then a secondary reason is perfectionism; a desire to make each post as long and detailed as my first. This leads to a psychology of 'oh I don't have time to do that much writing right now, so I will do it later'.
So, I am changing my strategy; perhaps by writing more short posts, as my dad's friend suggested, or by regular working on longer posts to post at periodic intervals.
I still have a desire for this blog to be a coherent narrative of my time in Singapore, so I will continue writing about events that happened a month and a half ago, and hopefully the past will catch up with the present.
Now, as I said, I sleep in the internet cafe in Tokyo; I catch the train back to the airport, collect my luggage, and get my boarding pass. I have a few hours in the airport; this is when the mishap with the sushi lady happens, mentioned in my first post. Without thinking, I also buy some gum (illegal in Singapore).
Without getting into any details, I will mention that the toilets in the airport had some pretty cool bells and whistles.
The plane ride over was really nice; Japan airlines is probably the best airline I have ever flown; the food actually seemed pretty fresh. There also several kinds of meat and fish included in the food. When I asked myself how many animals had died to feed me, I came up with the answer 'several'. Furthermore, hot green tea that they served was excellent.
So, I land in the SG airport, and nothing too eventful happens. At customs, they ask me about what I will be doing, in Singapore, and I explain that I will be studying. If I remember correctly, I showed them some documents I got from the school, and explain that I would be getting my actual student's pass (an ID card, I later found out) from the Immigration and Customs Authority at NUS the next week. They stamp my passport with a 'Social Visit Pass' good for 90 days. They also stamp my debarkation card with this pass; printed at the bottom of this card are the words "WARNING: DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW"**
I collect my baggage, and head for customs; I remember that I have some gum, so I go the 'items to declare' line. But they just wave me on through to the 'nothing to declare' line, and don't even check anything. I could have had anything! I neither confirm nor deny that I actually threw the gum away before going through customs. And I will neither confirm nor deny that I smuggled gum in from Malaysia this past weekend. And I will neither confirm nor deny that I am chewing gum as I write this post***.
So I catch a cab. The cab ride itself was interesting; I want to tell you about it, but I have reached the point where writing more would make this blog unsustainable to regularly update. You will hear about the cab ride, including and the conversation that I had with the driver, and my first sights of Singapore,at the beginning of the next post.
Tooteloo!
**They are serious. Since being here, I have learned that whether or not you are considered a trafficker is determined only by the amount of a substance that you possess. The initial sentencing is quickly carried out by a single judge, and there is one level of appeal, after which your only hope is presidential pardon. If (when) you are found guilty, you have a week, give or take to live.
As you might guess, Singapore does not have a drug problem.
***But, even though chewing gum is illegal Singapore, you just get a fine if caught, and I even hear that if customs agents catch you with it, you can just say 'its for personal use' and they will let you through. Some de-facto legalization.
Interestingly, if you read about the gum problems that Singapore was having a few decades ago, you would understand why it was outlawed. There was so much gum stuck on the subway doors that they would not open! You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore. I include an excerpt that I fount to be pretty hilarious below:
Revision of the Act[edit]
In 1999, United States President Bill Clinton and Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong agreed to initiate talks between the two countries for a bilateral free trade agreement (USS-FTA).[4] The talks later continued under the new administration of President George W. Bush. Details of the closed-door negotiations are unknown, but it became apparent that by the final phase of the negotiation in early 2003, there remained two unrelated issues: theWar in Iraq and chewing gum.
The Chicago-based Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company enlisted the help of a Washington, D.C lobbyist and of Illinois Congressman Phil Crane, then-chairmanof the United States House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, to get chewing gum on the agenda of the United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement.[5] This caused a dilemma for the Singapore Government. It recognised the health benefits of certain gums, such as a brand of sugar-free gum that contains calcium lactate to strengthen tooth enamel. Sale of this newly categorised medicinal gum was allowed, provided it was sold by a dentist or pharmacist, who must take down the names of buyers.
Soon, the USS-FTA was signed and the ban was revised. "They were tough," Crane said of the talks. Some found it surprising that Wrigley had fought hard on this battle, given the small size of Singapore's chewing market. But the company said it was worth it. "There's many examples in our history of things that may have not made short-term financial sense but was the right thing to do in a philosophical or long-term sense," said Christopher Perille, Wrigley's senior director of corporate communications.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)